Ok, so… I will admit that I’m pretty guilty of the whole ‘photo set up’ thing… You know, when you get your child to stop at the top of the slide and smile and say cheese and look all happy for the most perfect photo of a happy time at the park… When in reality, they screamed for 10 minutes when you left the house coz they had the wrong socks on, then refused to walk there and had to be carried, propped on their brothers pushchair or dragged along at snails pace, once there it was constant whinging coz they are hungry. You finally force them unwillingly to go down the slide and smile for the camera… When they never actually smiled the whole time you were at the damn park!!! (I hate parks)
Not every trip to the park is like this, they are generally very happy to be there and run around like crazy loons… I prefer to take action photos whilst they are doing things and not looking at the camera, but it’s nice to have some posed photos, the ones you can print out and keep and send to relatives… And no one really wants a photo of a tantrum!
The reason I started thinking about this was because the other day we were out and there was a dad and little boy of about 18 months old and he had a lovely, expensive looking camera and was trying to take photos of the little boy when he was playing, looking at the camera and smiling… Well, obviously this did not go the way daddy wanted it to… And he actually got angry with the boy, stopped him playing, moved him to set up a picture and asked the mum to hold him in position and move on his cue so he could take the picture… Ok, so he ended up getting a lovely photo of the boy in the end, but why? He wasn’t playing, he wasn’t enjoying himself… What will his parents think about when they look at this photo in the future? The lovely time they had that day? Or that their little boy was ‘naughty’ for not doing as he was told!! All he wanted to do was play… He was having so much fun, and in my opinion a picture that showed him genuinely smiling having a wonderful time engrossed in what he was doing would have been a much better keep sake photo…
I will probably still get my kids to say cheese for a photo… But I promise, I will never let a photo be more important than what they are doing/playing or get in the way of the fun they are having (or the lack of it š). I will just enjoy the moment in real life and not through my camera lens…
Xxx
Diary of a Playful Child 